Synopsis: In the city of Preston, aliens have for decades lived
hidden amongst humans disguised as the Earthling's own. Two more aliens, disguised
as a young Chinese brother and sister (Ko
and Lim) appear and meet a veteran
who has been on Earth for a long time (Patel),
disguised as an older Pakistani man who runs a corner store, who is both
incredibly glad to see them and offers a pure white room in his home for them
to stay. Their appearance is timely as aliens who live in the town are in
debate in-between finally revealing themselves to mankind and trying to return
back home. Amongst those who are caught up within this are a single mother (Brabin), a UFO enthusiast, who realises that
she may not be who she thinks she is, her adult daughter who meets a bald,
Chinese guy around her age and strikes up a bond with, and an alien disguised
as an older male counsellor who is the one instigating the idea of revealing
their true forms to humanity. As sinister hoodies stalk the aliens, and Acid Mother Temple acid rock scores the
scenes, it's culminates in transcendental revelations.

From http://i.imgur.com/f35aiUg.jpg

Piercing Brightness from that synopsis does sound awesome, only for
it to have plenty of great ideas and a lot to like but a structural flaw that
cripples it, it's presentation deeply flawed from the beginning. The best thing
to take from the film is its premise, the alien placed into the ordinary
environment, in this case an English city. Something innately about an English
environment, both the countryside or an urban landscape, is so drastically
different from the American cities and countryside of their sci-fi that to
imagine a UFO over a Spar shop in my
neck of the woods, even in London, is strange because of me being fed on
Hollywood science fiction and their locations for years. Especially if you
depict the England as here of corner shops and nightclubs, cups of tea and
breakfasts in cafes, it's incredibly odd
as does setting it in Scotland or any other member of the British Isles,
something which was as much the reason why Jonathan
Glazer'sUnder The Skin (2013),
with Hollywood star Scarlet Johansson
stepping out of her comfort zone and becoming an alien, was so eerie and
unique. Piercing Brightness takes
advantage of these cafes and nightclubs, soaking in the pleasant, sometimes
frankly bland mood of such environments in bright, crisp cinematography, the
kind of environments where it's the people within it that really give it some
much needed colour, an advantage this has in its cast and because it's all
about aliens and can get away with an unconventional use of such locations.

From http://creativebench.tv/assets/Piercing-Brightness-001-Jason-R-Moffat.jpg

While the aliens are revealed to
be of all shapes and sizes, the film can almost work as a metaphor about
immigrants entering a new country and having to adapt to the environment, not
in a crass jokey way, though the brother alien tries asking for cigarettes in a
cafe once, but in terms of the adaptation to the new place followed by the
hindsight, the moments of wonder whether it was better to be there or go back
to their home world, or whether it's better to revealed oneself as an
extraterrestrial being.

When the film succeeds, it's when
the aliens express their disappointment with their long waiting, originally part
of a project to study the humans, to be sent back home after the promise they
had this would be the case, of their position stuck amongst the humans and
having to accept their position, rewarding as the initial synopsis suggests it
would be. The cast in general helps with this, and there's one single individual,
Bhasker Patel as the alien posing as
a corner shop owner, who brings the quality of the film up a bar in how he is
both charismatic and how this best aspect of the film comes from a lot of his
scenes and dialogue, the man more than happy to be amongst the humans, excited
like a young man when new aliens like him appear, but melancholic if found in a
corner and opened to discussing the position of his life.

From http://www.scifinow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Piercing-Brightness-DVD-review.jpg

Technical Detail:

The music as well helps greatly
with the film, both from the original score by Alexander Tucker and the choice cuts picked from cult Japanese acid
rock group Acid Mother's Temple.
Known for being able to release up to four albums minimum a year since they
started in 1995, side projects with other bands, and their clear love of
psychedelic rock of the sixties from the title puns of their songs and albums, Acid Mother's Temple is the kind of band
you'd imagine aliens being scored to, archive footage of UFOs scored in
montages to their druggy guitar riffs and making a perfect union together.
Especially when the film starts to improve in structure by its middle half to
the end, when the music is of greater importance than visual trickery, it helps
reach a good build-up to the climax immensely.

From http://static.wixstatic.com/media/77eca5_0b975a7a3f561c883e9a3f46b93c7740.jpg_1024

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Experimental

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

The problem, when all the
following sounds spot-on and great, is how debuting director Shezad Dawood, originally an artist,
decided to put together Piercing
Brightness visually and in style. He decided to purposely make the film
abstract in tone, intercutting shots of birds at unexpected moments between
incidents in a single scene, using colour filters and distorted frames, noises
mixing with the music. The result is incredibly clichéd, the stereotype of what
an experimental movie is, which becomes distracting rather than abstract in
terms of presentation. This is worse as, with only eighty minutes of running
time, these techniques and inexplicable shots of birds, strange as a choice
when the real UFO footage at least makes sense in context, waste precious time
that could've gone to adding more plot about these aliens and their lives. More
to the relationship between the adult daughter and her bald headed, quiet friend,
at least some explanation to what the hell the faceless hoodies are, chasing
the aliens sinisterly on bicycles and molesting one in the least threatening
way possible by merely tugging her top and then leaving her alone, at least in
the logic of a weird movie plot. The film drastically improved when it gets to
the middle of its running time, when its night and the whole plot finishes
within this timeframe of one night, the score taking over and being far more
effective with some choice editing of snapshots in creating a tone. Unfortunately
by this point, despite the improvement, the film has very little of its own
character in tone beyond the essentials, the great idea in the centre of the
film, even Patel's memorable
performance, squandered by the lack of interesting structure.

From https://d28zjewj6xjjqr.cloudfront.net/api/file/LRbErieQmKWOVZ9PjU7h

Personal Opinion:

Piercing Brightness as a result is the heartbreaking example of
something that could've been cool or great, but is instead a testament to the
dangers of trying too hard, to a detriment, in being an alternative film. Considering
the director's art installation origins, the film based on a script from a cult
novelist, this is the same mistake that one finds in modern cult genre films particularly
the ones trying to be neo-grindhouse movies. I cannot believe I'm comparing
this to something like The Man With The
Iron Fists (2012) but it's the exact issue paralleled, the tone and style
compromising the greater premise and ideas that occasionally survive the structure
forced upon them and poke their heads up from the ill-designed surface to shine
from brief moments. These moments, like those neo-grindhouse movies, aren't
enough to save Piercing Brightness;
just when you fancy a trippy sci-fi where two sibling aliens see a female alien
with computer chip parts stuck to her face on the TV instructing them with
esoteric words, such a delight is spoilt by the packaging being detrimental to
the point it effects the quality of such moments.

From http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q80/trungcang/h5/56708114303224232242_zps873a8122.jpg~original

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"I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason." - Rubber (2010)

About Me

I am 28 years old and hail from England. For the last few years I have been a growing fan of cinema and have decided to take the next step into blogging about it and any other tangents that about the things I'm interested in I get onto.